In modern television broadcast systems, a wide variety of interactive digital television (DTV) content is broadcast to the home from broadcast facilities. The manner in which the DTV content is used and displayed by the viewer's television varies according to profile information known about the viewer. This profile information is usually stored somehow inside of a terminal unit, such as a television set, a set-top box (STB), a personal computer (PC), or similar device.
Many digital television systems have shown how content can be tailored within the terminal device according to this stored information. For example, some digital television systems display local merchant addresses according to a postal code stored during setup of the terminal unit. Some digital television systems are capable of providing directed advertising, in which a multiplexed group of advertisements are broadcast and the one displayed is selected by the terminal unit according to some demographic information (e.g., viewer age) stored in the viewer profile in the terminal unit. Other examples include game shows, home shopping opportunities, and the like, all of which have an element of choice that is made in the terminal unit according to some local data.
However, there are problems associated with digital television content selection by the terminal unit. Specifically, there are no explicit standards regarding what may be stored in the terminal unit and how the downloaded software accompanying the digital television content (e.g., ATSC/DASE or DVB/MIHP Java applications) might access the stored viewer profile data (also called “personalization data”). In essence, there is a “chicken-or-the-egg” problem. There will not be a strong push for standardizing viewer profile (personalized) data until there is a sufficient amount of interactive digital television content included in broadcast signals and there will not a lot of interactive digital TV content without a standard for viewer profile data.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for improved interactive digital television systems. In particular, there is a need for an interactive digital television capable of modifying and augmenting viewer profile information associated with the interactive digital television content without the development of a fixed fully standardized protocol.